LCole 07 - Deadly Cove (12 page)

“I see,” I said, and Ron got up from his chair and said, “Look, you don't want to be late for the next act of this circus, do you? I'll contact security, get you an escort to the south fence.”

I shook his hand and went out back to the lobby, where I waited for a security officer to show up. While I waited, I looked through a number of brochures in a rack by the glass doors. I picked up one brochure titled “Radiation: Our Most Misunderstood Friend” and glanced at it for a few moments until I saw the security pickup truck roll up to the entrance.

*   *   *

Back at the same outcropping of rock and dirt, there were the same lines of police officers and National Guardsmen, and I spent a few fruitless minutes looking to see if Diane Woods was on my part of the plant property, but I didn't see her. Wearing my bright oversized press pass, I wandered over to the collection of newspaper reporters, television correspondents, and radio reporters, and I was surprised to see Paula Quinn standing by herself, staring out at the approaching crowds of protesters on the marsh.

I went up to her, and she turned and gave me a wan smile. “Lewis.”

“Paula,” I said.

She said, “Let me just talk for a moment, all right? I'm doing okay. I slept a bit better last night, had some long talks with Mark, and we both decided that like the cowboy who falls off a horse, the best thing would be to get back on the horse and get at it again. So that's why I'm here. Actually, I'm here for two reasons. One, to get out of my funk, and two, to get back to work. I've got to work, Lewis, just have to … or at my age, I have to think about starting over in something completely new, and frankly speaking, that scares the shit out of me.”

I watched her determined face, wanting to believe every word that she was saying, but I saw only the haunted look in her eyes. “Fine,” I said. “Glad to hear it, glad to see you here.”

She turned and looked back out at the approaching people, and I put my arm out and gave her shoulders a quick squeeze, and she leaned into me for a moment, sighed, and said, “All I know is that we're promised something different this afternoon. You have any idea?”

I thought about Ron Shelton's conversation and said, “I have no doubt that they'll blame Bronson Toles's death on the Falconer nuclear power plant.”

She said, “Oh, that's not very original, Lewis. I want to see—oh, looks like it's starting.”

Unlike the other day, there was only one group of protesters coming to the fence. The Nuclear Freedom Front group was absent, and I had no idea what that meant. Another thing was oddly disturbing: The hundreds upon hundreds of people marching across the marsh grasses and mud were keeping silent. I didn't hear one word. Even the banners and the balloons and papier-mâché heads were missing. All that was there was the people, coming closer and closer to the fence line.

A shouted order from somewhere in the police line, and the police started marching down to the fence. I took a breath. I didn't like where this was going. The other day I had thought the NFF was doing a pretty good job of being ordered and disciplined, but their opponents on the other side were putting them to shame with their own sense of power and strength.

Paula said, her voice low, “I'm not sure what the hell is going on, but it's creeping me out. How about you?”

“The same,” I said, noticing that Paula was standing closer to me. Around us camera crews were focusing, zooming in on the approaching marchers. A wind came up, scattering a few dead leaves. The police marched down a slight incline to the fence. A couple of reporters tried to follow them down, but I saw Ron Shelton, in hard hat and short tan jacket, corral them and bring them back to the group. That didn't seem to make them happy, but those were the ground rules for getting on-plant access, that one had to follow the directions of the PR folks.

Out on the marshes, a whistle blew. The marchers halted about twenty feet away from the fence line. A few of the demonstrators, holding up orange sticks, walked up and down the front ranks of the demonstrators, dressing the line, making it more straight.

I said to Paula, “None of the NFF demonstrators are there, see that? And the supposedly loosey-goosey unorganized group, they certainly as hell look more organized today.”

Her voice was uneasy. “It's like … it's like the shooting has radicalized them. You know? The shooting … it's changed them.”

Sure
, I thought.
Changes.
A lot of things had changed with the killing of Bronson Toles.

Another blast of a whistle, and in the middle of the crowd, some of the people stepped aside, and I heard some mutters of astonishment from my fellow members of the Fourth Estate. A woman and a young man emerged from the crowd, holding hands, and Paula said, “That's Mrs. Toles—Laura Glynn Toles—and her son, Vic.”

Then, behind them, marching slowly and as best as they could across the uneven terrain, were six demonstrators bearing a plain wooden casket on their shoulders. Four men and two women, faces set and somber.

“Holy Christ,” one of the newsmen with us said. “Will you look at that? They dragged that poor bastard's body down here, just like that.”

A woman from one of the Boston television stations replied, “I can believe that. Think of all the good coverage they're getting for the six o'clock news.”

Laura Toles and her son marched out about five feet in front of the line of demonstrators, and then the casket bearing her husband's body came out and was next to them. As it had been the other day, a portable sound system was set up, a microphone placed in Laura's hand.

The murmuring from the press people dribbled away. I had my notebook out and saw that Paula did, too, though the hand holding a pen was trembling slightly.

“I … I want to speak to you, to all of you, today.” Laura's voice came out strong but quivering a bit. “I … I know that Bronson would want us to continue … that the ones … the ones who cut him down … for whatever reason … won't be stopped … that the righteousness of our cause will strengthen us to continue…”

She stopped and sobbed for a moment, and her son put an arm around her. Nearby a Boston television cameraman, looking through his camera, whispered, “Man, this shit is golden.”

Laura took a breath, audible through the microphone, and pointed with her free hand to the casket. “There … in there are the mortal remains of my beloved, the one who saw things and dared to change them. My love is gone … what is left are just the bones, tissues, and remnants of what was once here, which once talked, breathed and loved and fought. His body is at peace … a body sacrificed.”

She paused again, and it was amazing how quiet the hundreds and hundreds of people were, the ones gathered behind her, though it was easy to see that quite a few of them were weeping. “Yes … sacrificed … for I blame the powers that allowed this evil plant to be built, allowed it to operate, and still allow it to operate … though all of us know the threat it poses to us and every single living thing within miles about us. We charge everyone on the other side of that fence … charge them with complicity in the murder of my husband!”

I thought of what Ron Shelton had told me earlier and wished I were nearer to him; I would have loved to see the expression on his face. Now the people behind her were cheering, clapping, and even booing, and Laura raised a hand and said, “Yes! Complicity in the murder of my husband, a fine man who only wanted to feed the hungry, bring music and a message to the community, and to change this place of death into a place of life!”

More cheers, more yells, and this time, Laura allowed the noise to drift away. Her son—who looked to be in his early twenties—still had his arm around her. Laura looked back at the crowd and then to the fence line and the cops and said, “Tomorrow … tomorrow there will be a final memorial for my husband, at the Stone Chapel. Today … today we will march around the perimeter of Falconer Station, with my husband before us, to show that you may kill the messenger, you may shatter the mind that did so much for us, but you will never, ever kill the message. The messenger dies … but the message lives on! Forever!”

The cheers rose up, louder and louder, and then the casket started moving, and the sound system was taken away, and behind the casket and Laura and Vic Toles, the people flowed along, following them, and a chant began, soft at first, but then louder and louder:

“The people … united … will never be defeated! The people … united … will never be defeated! The people … united … will never be defeated!”

I turned to say something amusing and pithy to Paula, but she wasn't there.

I looked around at the collection of reporters and cameramen.

She was gone.

 

CHAPTER NINE

I stayed for a while longer at the plant site, and when boredom set in, I left to go home. When I got there, I went to my upstairs office and wrote up the day's events for my mistress at
Shoreline
magazine. I wrote about the silent crowd of demonstrators marching across the marshland, the way they opened up to display the casket of Bronson Toles, the emphatic tone of his widow's words, and when I had wrapped up the story, I decided to throw in the not-so-gracious but entirely understandable quote from Ron Shelton about the Russians and their nuclear power program.

About ten minutes after I had filed the story, the phone rang, with Denise on the other end.

“Nice piece of work,” she said.

“Glad to hear it.”

“And I love that quote about the fucking Russians. That's beautiful. Who said it?”

“An unnamed New England utility official,” I said. “Just like the story said.”

“I know, but who is it?”

“Sorry, Denise. I gave my word. No identification.”

I waited, hearing nothing save a light hiss of static, and she laughed. “I thought you said you weren't any good at this.”

“What's this?”

“Being a reporter.”

I said, “Just because you think I'm good at it doesn't mean I like doing it.”

*   *   *

Later that night I sat outside on the rear deck of my beach house, watching the ocean move its way back and forth on the coast, in its never-ending motion of play. When I had finished with my
Shoreline
story I tidied up the joint, including wrestling with a vacuum cleaner that seemed to roll over each time I tugged on the hose. With my Martha Stewart imitation complete, I then made a quick meal of a fried ham steak and defrosted Boston baked beans, which I had earlier made from an old family recipe that belonged to Diane Woods.

I had a light down comforter on my legs, binoculars in my laps, and a glass of Australian pinot noir in my hand. Before me was the night sky in all its splendid glory, obscured a bit by a glow to the southern and northern horizons that marked cities—but looking out to the east, the only cities were thousands of miles away. I sat and watched the slow rise of the constellations, and occasionally, when I spotted the fast-moving, unblinking dot of light that marked a satellite, I brought the binoculars up and watched the passage overhead.

It was a little game I played with myself, to watch those speedy dots slide across my night sky. Sometimes when I observed the hard points of light, I was sure I was seeing a satellite. Anyway, I always got a kick out of seeing bits of light that grew lighter and darker as they flung themselves across the night sky, for usually that meant they represented a spent rocket booster, or some other space debris, tumbling along at thousands of miles per hour. I recalled with a smile a little story that had come out a few years ago, from a retired Soviet space scientist, who said that the millions of people who thought they had seen the first earth satellite—
Sputnik
—back in 1957, had in fact seen no such thing. That little point of light had been the rocket booster that had propelled the little guy into space.

So there I was, and usually these moments of peace and repose calmed me down and made me ready for a good night's sleep, but not on this October evening. I was thinking more of yesterday, seeing Bronson Toles getting murdered, and seeing my friend Paula fall to the ground. I also thought of Paula in the hospital, how much she had changed overnight, and how she had sprinted away from the demonstration earlier today. Then there was Diane Woods, doing her job, living her life in a closet, and wanting so much to break out. And, of course, my dear Annie Wynn, no doubt in some anonymous hotel room, working hard to elect a man she believed in president.

All these women in my life, I thought, looking up at the stars, all trying to live, trying to survive, trying to make a difference.

What was I up to?

I put the binoculars down, took a sip of wine, and watched the stars some more.

*   *   *

The next day I stopped at the offices of the Tyler
Chronicle,
stuck on the first floor of an old office building in the center of Tyler proper, which is a few miles west of its famous beach. I wandered in through the back entrance, past piles of newspapers and walking on stained industrial-strength carpet that was worn in plenty of areas. Cables and power cords snaked out through the suspended ceiling, and up ahead was a tiny warren of desks with computer terminals on top. The place was empty, save for the
Chronicle
's editor, Rollie Grandmaison, who was sitting before his own terminal, peering at the screen over half-frame glasses, and typing with as much effort as if the keyboard had been printed in Japanese.

Rollie could have been sixty, seventy, or eighty, and if anyone knew, they weren't saying, and he had on his usual uniform of black trousers, white shirt, and black necktie, and what little hair remained was plastered over a freckled scalp. He didn't look up as I approached his cluttered desk, but he grunted and said, “She's not here.”